The Most Popular Starship In Space

It's not the most luxurious ride in the universe, but then it's not trying to be. Roberts Space Industries doesn't want the 2944 Aurora to be the best ship -- just your ship. I don't know about you, but I'm sold.

If I knew absolutely nothing else about Star Citizen, the massively crowd-funded space sim coming from the creator of Wing Commander, I would still be drooling over it based on these glorious ads for virtual rides alone.

I almost called them ads for objects that don't exist, but the Aurora does, at least virtually. It's the latest entry in the game's Pledge Store, when hopeful players can spend money on virtual goods as a means of donating to the product. The Aurora runs $US25 to $US45. The most expensive ship is $US250. That makes the Aurora the Nissan Sentra of space.

Star Citizen will be out late next year at the earliest. Luke Plunkett and I agree that is tragically long to wait.

Comments

I completely agree, this game looks great, but with all the extra legs on the crowd sourced funding its just taking forever to come out, i really hope i can hold up my enthusiasm for this, we will just have to see.

They've actually done some great work with the hangar module, for those that have pledged you actually get to go and check out your ship/ships... Personally I haven't had a lot of fun with it, I only have a single ship and the most basic hangar, but I've seen videos/screenshots of people with multiple ships and the business/deluxe hangars and I am sorely tempted to actually buy them (either more ships, or just the larger hangar). With the dogfighting module scheduled for December it looks like RSI might be able to give players some actual playable content for the game they're making.

The additional funding isn't making the game any longer in development it is funding them able to bring in features they planned to do earlier by hiring staff to complete said goals. Basically they are not doing what WOW did where they said "Money =/= Content" They get enough to hire people to work solely on something they will.

Hell after a year of development you can see your ships in a Hanger and walk around them - something that isn't even given to Publishers this early in the process.

But the caveat is - this game is a bargain at what the basic package pledge is - but the more you spend on the game the more it becomes an investment for fun - sure you can buy a ship for $250 that you need a crew to pilot or you could grind for it in the free MMO section of the game doing missions/trade/piracy instead.

I don't know about the "Forever to come out" statement. It's never been said that anything was "due" to come out around now, except for the Hangar Module which wasn't announced until earlier this year. Even looking at the Kickstarter page it has the beta as due November 2014 - even back then they anticipated 2 years of work before people would be getting involved.

Now? We can explore our ships, drive a buggy around our hangars for fun, and the dogfighting is just around the corner. What they've managed to put out in the space of a year is pretty cool so far, and it's only up from here.

Well i suppose it is a subjective "forever to come out" all i know is i have started and subsequently stopped playing EVE waiting for my fix of X4 type games since i saw this was coming out 1 year ago :)

Yeah, dont' get me wrong I understand the frustration (I pledged on October 19th, 2012!) and am fairly obsessed with the game - I just find other ways to satiate my appetite in the meantime, and appreciate the content they do put out. I enjoy the weekly Wingman's Hangar episodes, drool over commercials and videos as they release, and interact with other members of the guild I've joined. ... which is a bit of a first for me in that A) I never join guilds since I never play MMOs, and B) joining a guild for a game that's this far from release.

But really it's just attempts to justify my anticipation in any way I can. Small measures of fanboyism with generous helpings of trust in CIG.

The most expensive ship is $250? Oh no, they get more expensive than that. There are a number of "limited" ships, which are sold only on special events. There was the scythe at $300 (which isn't avaliable anymore and has been going for $1000+ on the reddit trading group), and the two Idris corvettes, one was $1000 and one $1250

"Star Citizen will be out late next year at the earliest."
But in December (all going well) backers will get a multiplayer dogfighting module. And we'll get a whole lot of things in between now and the final game release. Closed-beta-style.